EU commissioner predicts much tougher data protection laws

One of the EU's top data protection officials say that IP addresses will …

One of the most influential data privacy advocates in the EU, Germany's Peter Schaar, today told the Financial Times that his Article 29 Working Group plans to recommend that IP addresses be considered "personal information" in Europe. He also took issue with Google's 18-month data retention policy, saying that "for me personally it still seems rather long, and I could imagine I am not alone."

Schaar is Germany's Federal Data Protection Commissioner and the chair of the Article 29 Working Group that advises the EU on data privacy and security. The group is scheduled to present its findings to the EU on February 18, and Schaar's comments today are probably a good indication of what we can expect from the report.

We reported earlier that Schaar was a backer of the idea to make IP addresses personal information, making it subject to Europe's data privacy laws. He still sounds confident that the idea will pass muster, though it has been opposed by Google and others who claim that IP addresses are only "personal" in certain contexts.

The Article 29 Working Group has also been looking into data retention for months and its final recommendations are expected to carry significant weight with EU legislators. Schaar's hope for shorter retention terms could clash with law enforcement's desire to order mandatory (and longer) retention periods for data in order to catch criminals.

Compared to the US, where discussions about data privacy, protection, and retention are at an early stage and antitrust investigations are uncommon (and unlikely to order significant changes when they are undertaken), Europe's more aggressive regulatory approach certainly stands out.

We'll have a full report on the Working Group's findings when they are officially released.